Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Academic
Description
As a youth, I grew up in privileged circumstances, yet my family was very conscious of both the American civil rights movement and South Africa’s apartheid rule, accompanied by a large and steadily growing resistance to both, especially within South Africa, also from outside. During this period, I also visited Israel for the first time, in the summer of 1987, right before the First Intifada in December. There were no Walls then, fewer checkpoints, fewer settlements but still a regime of apartheid and settler colonialism.
As politically-engaged students, celebrated Mandela’s release from prison on 11 February 1990 and began to imagine the end of settler-colonial and apartheid rule in South Africa. We also (naively) hoped that the outcome of the Oslo Process would lead to a lasting past.
Understanding the history of apartheid in SA has become relatively mainstream; in Palestine far less so. In many respects South Africa’s experience has commonalities with Palestine, but there are some clear contrasts also.